Originally Written for Radical Notes

If laws are meant to protect the people, then the only thing illegal in India must be the Government.

Only a morally bankrupt, democratically inept and humanistically regressive group of parasites can sustain corruptible power through twisted legal clauses organically designed to crush collective aspirations.

It is only logical that a group of vandals in active collaborations with their masters stationed abroad get united to use the name of a country to misappropriate authorities, subjugate millions of informed as well as ignorant people, and repress dissent as though indifferent silence on part of the people were a virtue, enforced cowardice a boon and act of their withdrawal from organized solidarity movement a progress.

Only a perniciously evil group of power-wielders can fantasize about their achievements through stamping out the radical roots deeply embedded within the humanity. Using the shield of a country and the notions of sovereign indivisibility can the ruling class throttle the dissent of its subjects.

MacMohan Singh regime’s control over the Republic of India and Naveen Patnaik’s monopoly over Orissa’s fortunes are instances of despotic tendencies masquerading as democratic setups. When fraudulent acquisitions of natural resources are forbidden even by laws of nature, then governments such as the above are instituted to play debased brokers. And when proscribed negotiations over what is entitled to the indigenous are maneuvered for private profits, legal injunctions are recreated by the State powers to arrogate the land, and assault the people.

Recent interventions by the Government of India to clamp down on the democratic rights of the dispossessed by prescribing 10 years imprisonment for any person who supports whoever the ruling classes feel free to declare as terrorists, is an incursion into a historical territory that must serve as a warning to the rulers and as a weapon for the ruled.

Indian government’s frontal assaults on a freethinking people’s ability to challenge administrative and police atrocities in their own lands is not of recent origin. Throughout its history, Indian subcontinent has been subjected to arbitrary rules by opportunistic royalists, colonialists and democrats. And all throughout, the majority of people have suffered immensely, dispossessed for the most part as they had been rendered.

The biggest sufferers of organized State assaults have been the indigenous. From the days of the Aryan invaders, to the trickery of the British traders, to electoral victories of the domestic capitalist class in cohort with Western imperialistic powers – the idea of India has triumphed at the expense of the Indians.

The indigenous tillers and cultivators, the forest dwellers, the river worshippers, the upholders of matriarchy, the huge majority of Indian population have been constantly harassed by their feudal lords – of various colors and races. And yet, never have the poorest section of the society suffered silently. Through rebellions and revolutions, through armed struggles and insurgencies, they have fought back against the perpetrators.

The peasants and the factory workers of India, the landless and the dispossessed of the biggest so-called democracy in the world, those that are the refugees in their own lands, who cultivate and yet never benefit, who withstand the worst natural calamities and yet commit suicides to avoid corporate banking penalties, those that consider their children as their only treasures and yet have to put them up on sale so the children can survive the bureaucratic assaults, those that tend to the forests and the rivers only to witness them being snatched away by the agents of the government at the behest of multinational firms – these are the people who have always known that they shall lose the battles against the mammoth militia, sponsored by unaudited parliamentary budgets. And yet, these are the people, the working poor that constitute the unfortunate majority of Indians, who have never given up in their resolution to fight the power.

They fight the power braving the scorching sun, bringing along bows and arrows, organizing in hand-weaved red flags, lining up to raise their voices, dry and hungry, with babies in arms, soiled towels to wipe away the sweats off the forehead. They miss several meals, several more working days in protesting against the encroachment of their lands. The lands that are their own, are the only thing they call their own. Without their lands, they are landless in settlements and statistics in slums. Just as India’s sovereignty is supreme with the states and union territories intact and untouched by foreign powers, their sovereignty is equally a matter of pride and dignity. After all, they are the majority Indians.

They are the Indians that weakened the feudal structures, fought the exploitative kings, organized the movements against the British, and finally led India to a new awakening in 1947. And yet, the majority Indians are the unfree Indians. Little did they know that the concept of freedom is not universally applicable. That, equality and liberty do not distribute as democratically as the electoral promises of the free Indians.

The free Indians are different species altogether, forever exulting in their personal achievements, in career growths and televised glories. The free Indians are forever expanding their ambitions and territorial profit schemes. The free Indians are represented by political parties that actually work for them to set up engineering colleges and international airports. The free Indians read newspapers and watch television channels that reward the industrialists, update dinner minutes between Singh and Obama, immortalize Ratan Tata, interviews Anil Agarwal and manufactures opinion polls among urban youths that reestablishes the credibilities of Naveen Patnaik.

The free Indians are the ones for whom the country exists, the law and order system exists, the educational infrastructure exists, the collaborative business model exists. Even the official political parties – right, left and centrists – exist. The conversation about the country is an exclusive conversation among the free Indians.

During one such exclusive conversation among the free Indians, it has been decided that the long standing demands of indigenous peoples in Orissa and elsewhere should no more be ignored. Breaking all conventions in the past, it has now been decided that the demands of the poorest sections be heard. In fact, the demands be recorded well. Not only their demands, but also of those people who extend any amount of overt or covert support to them. For once, the free India has decided in favor of listening to the captive people, so that, for once and for all, they can all be forcibly silenced. 10 years or fine, or both – for all people who express solidarity with the majority Indians. At long last, the majority Indians are going to be recorded.

For most people, the corporate houses are faces of terror because it is they that expand their profiteering bases without consideration towards the inhabitants, especially the poor and destitute class. But the Indian government finds it otherwise. It paints the victims as the terrorists. And those that support the victims then are branded as sympathizers of terrorism.

History repeats itself. In India’s history, several times over. As in the past, the illusions of permanent freedom are once again fading away. For, one can use a transient administrative machinery to cowardly assassinate the revolutionaries, but no one can ever eliminate the historical inevitabilities of revolutions.

Arrest us all, if you must. Every person that cries in despair at the state of subjugation that is called India today, is guilty of supporting the victims in the class war waged against the expansionist politico-corporate nexus. Perhaps those of you that enjoy the power corridors and make way for the billionaires to spread their empires are enjoying the freedom of trickled down bribes. However, for the rest of us, our freedom is not conditional upon the success of the ruling class structures and your economic masters.

Our freedom is not about piecemeal compensations as agreed upon by corporate giants of South Korea, Japan and the United States. Our freedom is not open to half-hearted round table negotiations. We are yet to attain the freedom we have been dying for since generations. And we are yet to give up the hope that one day, we shall collectively inhabit the planet, without submitting any portion thereof to any greedy private capitalistic interests, irrespective of geographical territories.

You can call us unacceptable names, attribute us with political stigmas, categorize us into one way or the other for your divisive ruling habits. But the working people of the world demand immediate withdrawal of profiteering interests from common lands. From Orissa to Chiapas, we are united by our belief in formation of a world, devoid of imperialistic intents. And this collective conviction for human freedom is not up for demise within next 10 years, or anytime thereafter.

No legal case in American history has been more cited than The Scottsboro Trial. Nine young African American men, aged 13 and up, were jailed in Scottsboro, Alabama to await trial over an accusation that they had raped two white women on a train in the Spring of 1931.

The nature of racism in this instance was not the novelty – indeed, American society was witness to countless false charges brought against the black people. However, The Scottsboro Trial became a landmark via the manner in which racism for the first time was fiercely and openly challenged in the United States.

When the entire country was refusing to take side of Scottsboro Nine, it was the Communist Party which came to aid the young men. International Labor Defense – a coalition formed by the communists to defend Scottsboro Nine benefitted from the active involvement of a black woman on their national board – a pioneering champion of labor classes in America – Lucy Parsons (1853-1942).

Class, Race and Gender
Parsons’ commitments towards freedom of the young Black Communist Angelo Herndon in Georgia, Tom Mooney in California, and for the Scottsoboro Nine in Alabama were unflinching. Parsons recognized the class system in America as the prime factor in perpetuating racism. She was the foremost American feminist to declare that race, gender and sexuality are not oppressed identities by themselves. It is the economic class that determines the level of oppression people of minorities have to confront. Notwithstanding her social location of being a black and a woman, Parsons declared that a black person in America is exploited not because she/he is black. “It is because he is poor. It is because he is dependent. Because he is poorer as a class than his white wage-slave brother of the North.”

Lucy Parsons was a relentless defender of working class rights. To contain her popularity, the media portrayed her more as the wife of Albert Parsons – a Haymarket martyr, who was murdered by the state of Illinois, while demanding for eight-hour working day on November 11, 1887. While identifying her with Albert’s causes, history textbooks – both liberal and conservative – seldom mention Parsons as the radical torchbearer of American communist movement.

Communistic Commitments
Parsons’ commitment to the cause of international communism often embarrassed the United States administration. FBI confiscated her library comprising over 1,500 books and progressive works soon after her accidental death – thus preventing the country of having access to her radicalism. But those that witnessed Parsons‘ oratory and benefitted from her skills of organizing labor knew of Parsons‘ disdain towards anarchism which she felt was not capable of leading the masses onto revolutions.

Following Bolshevik Revolution in Soviet Union, IWW would witness several of its main organizers joining the Communist Party. Parsons, along with Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Flynn were among the pioneering American communists. Parsons not only had officially joined the Communist Party of the United States, she was also vocally opposed to distractions within revolutionary movements.

Parsons condemned celebrated anarchist Emma Goldman for “addressing large middle-class audiences”. Whereas Lucy Parsons‘ feminism considered women’s oppression as a function of capitalism, Emma Goldman was clearly not in favor of a vanguard party taking up feminist causes. Parsons in her dedication towards working class liberation movements never lost sight of her goal, never compromised on her principled stands on the side of the working poor, and never aspired for mere social acceptance or glory.

Voice of Dissent
Parsons was among the first women to join the founding convention of IWW. She thundered: “We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it. But we have our labor. Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them.”

In The Agitator, dated November 1, 1912 she referred to Haymarket martyrs thus: “Our comrades were not murdered by the state because they had any connection with the bombthrowing, but because they were active in organizing the wage-slaves. The capitalist class didn’t want to find the bombthrower; this class foolishly believed that by putting to death the active spirits of the labor movement of the time, it could frighten the working class back to slavery.”

She had no illusions about capitalistic world order. Parsons called for armed overthrow of the American ruling class. She refused to buy into an argument that the origin of racist violence was in racism. Instead, Parsons viewed racism as a necessary byproduct of capitalism. In 1886, she called for armed resistance to the working class: “You are not absolutely defenseless. For the torch of the incendiary, which has been known with impunity, cannot be wrested from you!”

For Parsons, her personal losses meant nothing; her oppression as a woman meant less. She was dedicated to usher in changes for the entire humanity – changes that would alter the world order in favor of the working poor class.

Even as a founding member of IWW, she was not willing to let the world’s largest labor union function in a romanticized manner. She radicalized the IWW by demanding that women, Mexican migrant workers and even the unemployed become full and equal members.

With her clarity of vision, lifelong devotion towards communist causes, her strict adherence to radical demands for a societal replacement of class structure, Lucy Parsons remains the most shining example of an American woman who turned her disadvantaged social locations of race and gender, to one of formidable strength – raising herself to bring about emancipated working class consciousness.

By Saswat Pattanayak

“To be neutral is to collaborate with whatever is going on, and I as a teacher do not want to be a collaborator with whatever is happening in the world today.” (Howard Zinn)

In the grossly unequal world that we inhabit, it is always tempting to remain apolitical, especially if one is an academician materially benefiting from the status quo system of education. It is only logical to separate classroom instructions from political activisms, since teachers are desired by the system to enhance employability of students within the social framework, not to agitate their conscience to challenge the social order. In a world of established, codified and professional knowledge, it is required on part of historians to promulgate official narrations of national heroes and victorious wars; not overthrow ruling class histories to replace them with versions of the oppressed subjects.

Howard Zinn’s aspirations to become a teacher were also founded with similar convictions. But unlike most people in his times, he was fundamentally a radical thinker. When he heard Woody Guthrie’s song on Ludlow Massacre, he wondered why he never read about it in history books. He questioned the omission of labor struggles in historical manuscripts. When for the first time he joined a mass demonstration at the age of 17 to strengthen the Communist Party of the United States of America on Times Square, he questioned the claimed neutrality of barbaric police and brutal government orders. Unlike most people of our times, he decided he must choose a side, and he chose his side early on. A side of the toiling masses, and mine workers, of protesting students and peaceniks, of marginalized sections and conscientious objectors. A side, which he never left, not even in his death. For the world of the oppressed, Zinn shall always remain alive as the working class professor who dedicated his life in challenging the system of education by getting the world to enter the university and letting the university enter into the world.

Howard Zinn's first participation at a political rally - 1939 in Times Square

University was not to be merely wasted in academic pursuits. As a white professor in Atlanta-based predominantly black Spelman College, Zinn organized students around issues of desegregation and racial justice in manners which led FBI to enlist him. Bringing to national attention the remarkable acts of resistance orchestrated by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he redefined nonviolence: “Non-violence does not mean acceptance, it means resistance. Not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive; it involves strikes, boycotts, non cooperation, mass demonstration, and sabotage.” Zinn’s involvement in black liberation struggles cost him his job, led to his arrest and raised questions on his acceptance as a historian. His Vietnam coverage as a journalist to uncover the Operation County Fair – the systematic killings of Vietnamese men and torture of women and children – added to his disrepute for the administrations. For the free American society, he had unbridled rage: “We grow up in a controlled society. When one person kills another person, that is murder. When a government kills a hundred thousand persons, is that patriotism?”

Subjective Historian

When he finally authored A People’s History of the United States, it was boycotted by American Historical Review – the foremost American academic history journal. Zinn was accused of taking sides of the indigenous, in his authoritative and foremost assessment of Columbus as an anti-hero. He silenced the objectivists: “There is no such thing as impartial history. The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lie. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of important of course depends on one’s values.” One’s values often metamorphose with changing times. But Howard Zinn’s never did. He remained a radical throughout, his capacity for moral outrage remaining unparalleled.

He wrote, for instance, “There is no objective way to deal with the Ludlow Massacre. There is the subjective (biased, opinionated) decision to omit it from history, based on a value system which doesn’t consider it important enough. That value system may include a fundamental belief in the beneficence of the American industrial system. Or it may just involve a complacency about class struggle and the intrusion of government on the side of corporations. In any case, it is a certain set of values which dictates the ignoring of that event. It is also a subjective decision to tell the story of the Ludlow Massacre in some detail. My decision was based on my belief that it is important for people to know the extent of class conflict in our history, to know something about how hard working people had to struggle to change their conditions, and to understand the role of the government and the mainstream press in the class struggles of our past.”

Discovery of Columbus

If the world was certain about one American knowledge, it was the discovery of the continent. Columbus had discovered America, until Howard Zinn discovered Columbus through the latter’s diaries. Zinn contended that a people cannot be discovered by their class enemies. They can only be brutally murdered, captured and subjugated. With thoroughly fundamental researches, Zinn proceeded to conclude on Columbus and the foundation of America which was hitherto unknown. “What did Columbus want? In the first two weeks of journal entries, there is one word that recurs seventy-five times: GOLD,” the historian revealed. Zinn’s infusion of people’s history in America inspired similar Marxist interpretations of indigenous histories throughout the globe. In popularizing the possibility of telling history from the lens of the oppressed, Zinn virtually legitimized the subject as a progressive weapon.

Pacifism as a Necessity

Zinn did not oppose wars because doing so was in fashion. In fact, his kind of opposition has never been in fashion. He has been a steadfast pacifist who saw no merit in wars. There was no such thing as a good war in our times, he would conclude after using chemical weapons during the Second World War as a fighter pilot. His was an imagination that has not been fully expanded so far, but its merits are experienced daily as the American power continues its “just wars” on the “axis of evil”. Suffice it to say, if history is a great lesson, Zinn’s pacifist stances are certainly among the greatest ones.

Zinn wrote in his Just and Unjust Wars: “What war does, even if it starts with an injustice, is multiply the injustice. If it starts on the basis of violence, it multiplies the violence. If it starts on the basis of defending yourself against brutality, then you end up becoming a brute.”

Disobedience to Law

Ruling class always uses ‘national security’ as the potent excuse to suppress mass rebellion. Zinn instigated students and young people to question such tactics, especially during the times of wars. In his essay, Second Thoughts on the First Amendment, Zinn wrote: “The First Amendment has always been shoved aside in times of war or near war. 1798 was near war, 1917 was war. In 1940 when the Smith Act was passed the country was near war. In those trials against the Communist and Socialist Workers Party the courtroom was full with stuff the prosecution had brought in. What had they brought in? Guns, bombs, dynamite fuses? No, they brought in the works of Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin. That’s like a bomb. So people went to jail. For national security.”

Throughout his academic and journalistic career, Zinn maintained that progress of the society depended not on the premise of abiding the law of the land, or to uphold “national security”, but through demonstration of mass disobedience towards unjust laws. He would enlighten students and readers on how Supreme Court never changed the course of American freedom path. No well-meaning jury ever changed any law for the better. People on the streets have always forced the judiciary system to reform itself. Even to the last days, he wrote how President Obama was incapable of bringing fundamental changes, unless mass participations against his power status quo forces him to radically different directions. Zinn’s capacity to comprehend potentials within the masses as opposed to within the leaders is what distinguished him from many progressive thinkers.

Progressive Storyteller

One remarkable aspect of Howard Zinn was his lack of professionalism. Zinn, despite belonging to the world of academics, was an anti-academician. He never waited for academic peer reviews or approvals by purist committees. He was not a historian with any astute sense of proportion or dignified scholastic languages. He was never one to claim for fame or stick to major publications glorifying inaccessible texts. About his greatest work, A People’s History, he once said, “I wanted to tell the story of the nation’s industrial progress from the standpoint not of Rockefeller and Carnegie and Vanderbilt, but of the people who worked in their mines, their oil fields, who lost their limbs or their lives building the railroads. I wanted to tell the story of wars, not from the standpoint of generals and presidents, not from the standpoints of those military heroes whose statues you see all over this country, but through the eyes of the G.I.’s, or through the eyes of “the enemy.” Yes, why not look at the Mexican War, that great military triumph of the United States, from the viewpoint of the Mexicans?”

If Zinn wrote, he did so in order to reach out to the masses that had no inkling of theoretical underpinnings or paradoxical paradigms. Zinn wrote in order to tell the lesser told stories. He wrote biographies of unknown strugglers of the past. He made accessible the speeches of the striking miners. He edited books that were entirely collections of radical writings. As though an enthusiast, a sucker for historical trivia, Zinn became the greatest medium for radical messages for people of all ages and walks of life.

Reclaiming Marx

Zinn was never afraid of being labeled a Marxist in the world of hypocritical academia, but he wondered if Marx would have been pleased with such an epithet reserved for a genuine activist. Many of his contemporaries immensely borrowed from the works of Marx and Lenin, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge. Zinn brought Marx alive within historical realm, not just through the framework with which he studied history, but also by penning down Marx in Soho. Not just was it a satirical take on the current pseudo-Marxists, it was also a grave reminder on how Marx was possibly the most relevant text in contemporary times.

Class analysis formed the core of every historical research Zinn conducted. He had an impeccable ability to discern illusions. Zinn vehemently opposed the capitalistic propaganda around freedom of speech as a moral injunction to gain respectability in contemporary world order. He turned the question on its head for American freedom: “Freedom of speech is not just a quality. It’s a quantity. It’s not a matter of do you have free speech, like in America we have free speech. Just like, in America we have money. How much do you have? How much freedom of speech do you have? Do you have as much freedom of speech as Exxon?”

Critical questions alone have guided the world to progressive historical interpretations. Employing radical perspectives, Howard Zinn has not only left behind issues that have legacies of progressivism, but also equally powerful tools for future reinventions of the current world. “We the people” are stricken by the grief of his passage, but enriched by his enduring imaginings.

There simply need not be any elements of surprise or shock at Barack Obama receiving Nobel Peace Prize. Almost every year, this award has been granted to neoliberal policy brokers otherwise known as liberals, social democrats, or simply the firm believers in Eurocentric democratic ethos that can be ruthlessly applied on lesser countries via doublespeaks. Obama joins Ahtisaari, Gore, Dae-jung, Trimble, Belo, Walesa, Robles, Esquivel, Begin, Sakharov, Sato, Cassin, Kissinger, Wilson, etc., as the latest torchbearer of the most overrated award in the human history.

Liberal media are attributing his win to moments in anticipation, while conservatives are yet to get over the shock. However, Obama is absolutely worthy of winning the prize and he must be congratulated for the same as a regular recipient of this insipid achievement. Even a cursory look at past few winners should indicate that Obama’s prize perfectly fits.

Last year’s winner, Martti Ahtisaari was almost a NATO agent who worked tirelessly as an anti-communist and aspired to end Finland’s neutrality through his fetishized versions of a corporate Finland as a prosperous Finland.

The year before, Al Gore – a dubious champion of environmental hanky-panky that has no pragmatic basis but plenty of populist boasts with an ability to marry corporate america with Zionist media lobby received the award. Gore’s multi-billion dollar campaigners have been chiefly free market champions who “reformed” Soviet Union and infamous money launderers such as Howard Glicken, Nate Landow and terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

When Kim Dae-jung won the award, he was known as a firmly indoctrinated champion of capitalism, and a tireless communicator in the process of introducing “democracy” in North Korea, the kind of diplomatic talks which can bring down socialistic systems rather smoothly.

David Trimble, a Protestant leader from Ireland hell bent to punish Sinn Fein, the left-wing political wing of the IRA has also been an obvious choice. Comparable to him was a previous winner Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, a Roman Catholic bishop appointed to rid East Timor of the last of its radical strands. As though Portuguese occupation was not enough, an illegal encroachment of the country via NATO-backed Indonesia was to be done to eliminate the communists. After its successful atrocities, Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta have become the human face to the “peaceful” interventions in the lives of indigenous peoples through religious pacifications. The peoples can no more demand for reparations in a religious colony.

Lech Walesa, a pronounced reactionary leader in Poland organizing trade unions against the communists, received Nobel merely for such attempts. Alfonso García Robles collaborated with the nuclear powers in order to promote a non-nuclear zone for Latin America without demanding nuclear dismantling of the West. Nobel Peace Prize has traditionally been conferred upon non-agitating peaceniks who like much of social democrats, do not wish to alter the equation of the privileged while ensuring limitations for the oppressed. Dangerous tools are safe in the hands of the mafia, and very dangerous in the hands of the commoners. Nobel prize committees have year after year acknowledged this colonial notion.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, another product of Christian missionary position of effecting changes without revolutions- changes as feeble as conversion to a dogmatic religion, was an illustrious winner. Even as vocally opposed to wars and policies led down by the kinds of Bush, the Nobel Peace winners are not the ones who even address the root causes of wars – class conflicts – and have acutely selective memories when it comes to linking the Church with perpetuation of bourgeois wars.

Menachem Begin, a zionist militarist who launched massive attacks against Iraq and Lebanon even before anyone witnessed Gulf Wars was another perfect winner. One of the biggest war maniacs in recent history, he was the architect of Begin Doctrine, way more vicious than any unofficial Bush doctrines the peaceniks have resented.

Andrei Sakharov, an exaggerated dissident who in the peak of cold war was perhaps so oblivious of American expansions that he created a stir through his advocacy in support of the imperialistic intentions; and immediately was conferred Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet another winner was Eisaku Sato, a reactionary conservative collaborator of Japanese-American interests, the principal opponent to Communist China’s recognition as a UN member, and a prime donor to Taiwanese causes. Here was another classic example of a liberal crony of the routine violators of international sovereign policies.

In previous years, René Cassin, chief legal advisor to Charles de Gaulle has won this coveted award, as has George Marshall. Marshall, the post-war propagandist was instrumental in implanting market economies in communist Europe through bribing, investing and coercing.

Albert Schweitzer’s racist stances on African peoples were well known when he won the Nobel Peace for his White Man’s burdens. So was Woodrow Wilson, a racist, segregationist president whose life was marked by pursuance of the American doctrine of imperialism and global hegemony.

Lesser said the better it is about Henry Kissinger, his pronounced hatred for Third World solidarity movements and his war-mongering. If Cold War achieved demise of Communistic alliances globally, it was done through the only weapons the capitalists know of: money, diplomacy and religion. The role of Nobel Peace Committee in converting the interventionists to heroes and legitimizing their methods of covert propaganda operations is unparalleled.

If Dalai Lama through soothing words of peace and spirituality attempted to undermine a peoples’ republic and won the awards through relegating Tibet into ancient conservative times, then it should not surprise anyone why F.W. de Klerk also won on behalf of South Africa. “Non-violence” in our times of global capitalism translates to unconditional surrender on part of the agitating masses to a reformed society. The reforms must take place within the overarching designs of the former colonial masters. Aung San Suu Kyi is another instance of a revolutionary whose limits have been set by Washington DC.

Since the inception of Nobel Peace Prize, an overwhelming majority of the awards have gone to pronounced anti-communists, masquerading as “reformers”. Mikhail Gorbachev is the brightest instance. Second largest category is the Christian religious saints, bishops and preachers. Goes without saying, their roles have been exemplarily complimenting the “pacifist” reformers. Wherever there was communistic presence, the Christian values needed to be imported there to sabotage peoples’ movements. West Bengal in India is a case in point, where Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had to deserve Nobel Peace Prize through its covert operations of religious conversion, selective care and influence upon CIA-backed dictators in Africa. Communists are bound to agitate the hungry against their class exploiters, but the Saints pacify the hungry through capitalistic charity funds. Who wins the Nobel Peace is anyone’s guess.

Around the time when revolutionary spirits in Latin America was sky-high and Che’s dreams of unifying the region was slowly gaining grounds, Nobel Committee chose Oscar Arias Sánchez who through smooth means, implemented neoliberal economic policies in Costa Rica.

The last category of Nobel Peace Prize winners have great affinity with Zionist causes. The brightest scholar here is Elie Wiesel – the man with the irresponsible claims on the “uniqueness of Holocaust” and one infamous for downplaying or flatly refusing to acknowledge that other genocides caused by the Nazis have any comparable significance. Speaking of Israelis, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were certainly not the exceptions.

Deconstruction of “Peace” in Nobel Prize and Lenin Prize:

With so many hardcore militarists (Wilson, Kissinger, Begin, Sato, etc.,) winning Nobel Peace Prize, not to mention scores of illustrious supporters of the aggressive Euro-American bloc during Cold War, how exactly is “Peace” defined by the wise committee?

Nobel jurists further the Eurocentric views of the world and they should not be blamed for it. After all, the people of color, the oppressed people in majority of the world did not have the financial means to combat the advertorial impacts of the aura surrounding this prize. For instance, Lenin Peace Prizes have been awarded to freedom fighters against colonial masters in many African and Asian countries, but the relevance of that great award has never been highlighted as part of collective historical knowledge.
Lenin Peace Prize, that truly revolutionary recognition of the people who strived to bring peace among nations has been relegated to obscurity through sheer exhibitionism on part of the European capitalists disguising themselves under the banner of Nobel. The sheer magnitude of diversity among the winners of Lenin Peace Prize, their roles in dismantling of colonial powers, and their relentless struggles on the sides of the oppressed are testimony to the true acknowledgment of what constitutes peace.

There is a rejoice among people of color upon the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama. That is just and proper. But what escapes media attention is the fact that Nobel Prizes have been racist awards ever since their inceptions. Not a single black person has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Physics or Medicine. Out of a total of 789 Nobel Prizes conferred thus far, only 11 have been awarded to black people. Out of these 11, one was an economist, three were laureates, and as many as 8 were pacifists!
How does it so happen that whereas black accomplishments are overlooked in every field of life by the colonial powers, they happen to be so useful when it comes to recognizing their peaceful conducts? How is it that the oppressed are awarded not for their agitations, but for their accommodations?

Quite naturally so. Nobel Prizes have been Eurocentric mechanisms to brand those people as the greatest human beings on the planet, that dutifully submit to the whims of colonial and imperial powers. Those people who have put their acts together to intervene in revolutionary situations with their negotiating skills to prevent escalation of class wars. These are the people who have pronounced that the exploiters and the exploited can and must live together in harmony with the class divisions remaining intact. Nobel Prizes are granted to those chosen few among the minorities that have a greater impact over the masses compared to their revolutionary counterparts.

There should not be any surprises. Nobel Prizes are offered by the Royalists, the status quo upholders, the deniers of class society. Their construction of “peace” is determined through their worldview, which comprises the refusal for a replacement of unjust world order, and strong resentment at revolutionary forces. Barack Obama’s win is the most natural continuation of Nobel Peace Prize tradition. Peace in Nobel Prize tradition is capitalistic utopia. In the realist world, peace can prevail only through equitable redistribution of privileges. Capitalism simply cannot accept that. Hence, peace itself has to be redefined.
Contrasted to that, majority of Lenin Peace Prizes were granted to people of color, and a huge majority of them were agitators. These were true proponents of peace for the peoples in the world. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Angela Davis (USA), Samora Machel (Mozambique), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Paul Robeson (USA), Ahmed Sékou Touré (Guinea), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), W. E. B. Du Bois (USA) were some of the leading freedom fighters against colonialism. Lenin Peace Prizes were also awarded to Pablo Picasso (Spain), Brazil’s Jorge Amado, Saifuddin Kitchlew (India), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Bertolt Brecht (East Germany), Thakin Kodaw Hmaing of Burma, Nicolás Guillén of Cuba, Lázaro Cárdenas of Mexico, Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Modibo Keïta of Mali, Aruna Asaf Ali (India), Kamal Jumblatt of Lebanon, Salvador Allende of Chile, Lê Duẩn of Vietnam, Miguel Otero Silva of Venezuela, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Mikis Theodorakis of Greece, and Abdul Sattar Edhi of Pakistan, among many other undisputed champions of human liberty. When Nelson Mandela was awarded Lenin Peace Prize in 1990, his legacy was not insulted by getting him to share the stage with F.W. de Clark.

In the world revolutionary histories, there are heroes, and there are sycophants. There are radical activists who march on without awaiting an award, and there are naive moderates that fall into grander schemes of manipulated dictums. In its truest sense, Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded to peace activists barring on a couple of occasions. One worthy winner was Linus Pauling of the United States. The second one was Le Duc Tho of Vietnam. Like another radical Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Duc Tho too, had refused to accept Nobel Prize. Sartre refused to bring glory to racist France, and Le Duc refused to accept the prize at the same terms as Kissinger and to share the stage with him.

Nobel Peace Prize, in reality is an apologist for, and celebration of continued Eurocentric imperialism. Obama is the latest one to have been “humbled”. Amidst his militarist interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, through his announcements for larger US troops for invasions and bigger budget to feed the military-industrial complex, the Nobel committees have yet again perpetuated a reactionary definition of peace. In their world of successes and achievements, they have merely crowned their King.

(Written for publication in Women’s Rights NY)

Contrary to mainstream media depictions, David Letterman did not have any affairs with his staff members. And contrary to liberal media apprehensions, the world does not need to be bothered about whether the incidents took place before or after his marriage. Letterman’s apologies to his wife on air are ridiculously unnecessary, and his failure to step down from his job after admission of guilt is soaked in implicit privileges.

What Letterman has done is sheer abuse of his economic power and gender privilege. His unabashed claim that any disclosure of the details would embarrass his women employees he had sex with, evidences blatant sexism. Its a great irony of our times that women continue to not only put up with sexual advances at workplaces, but also are expected to maintain silence in fear of their career prospects. And here is a liberal intellectual who advances this regressive theory in an effort to “protect” his victims.

If Letterman feels his acts with the female employees are not unethical, the same must hold true for the women too. Hence, he needs to announce the names of the staffers, and the judiciary system must ensure that nothing harms the women simply because they had a relationship with Letterman. If Letterman’s job is not being taken away despite his being the perpetrator, there is no reason why the women’s will be.

If, however, Letterman feels he has violated ethics and possibly laws, by acting unworthy of his stature by means of either sexually exploiting the employees or by indulging in “consensual” sex with employees with full knowledge of their otherwise social commitments, then Letterman should have already resigned long time back, and having failed to do so, he must set an example now.

However, as it turns out, the world came to know about Letterman’s abuse of power only following the blackmailing tactics, indicating Letterman had something to hide, and this something was clearly unethical.

Letterman’s statement is wrong at so many levels: “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. Now, my response to that is, yes I have. I have had sex with women who work on this show. And would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, perhaps it would. Especially for the women. But that’s a decision for them to make–if they want to come public and talk about the relationships, if I want to go public and talk about the relationships.”

First, Letterman’s dismissal of the employees as just “women” without names who “work for” him on the show clearly smacks of disrespect. Secondly, to assume that the onus must lie with the women to protect their character from being tarnished is the age-old excuse under which men have sexually exploited women all along. Letterman’s reasonings might be proper considering his tradition of making disparaging remarks about women (Sarah Palin and her daughter were verbally humiliated by Letterman solely based on their gender), but they are no grounds for escaping critical scrutiny. Thirdly, the race and gender blindness of powerful men have always assumed that it is entirely possible for the women victims to become public and talk about their relationships with the perpetrators, and that, in doing so, they just might be believed. Letterman assumes he and his victims are on the equal level, without taking into consideration the disparate social locations they belong to, the unequal power relationships they share, the economic class barriers among them and the gender equations prevailing in today’s sexist world.

Whether Letterman invites legal troubles or not is unimportant. At the crux of the issue are his responses and responsibilities as a media personality who has been accorded viewership. An abuse of power coupled with racial privileges cost Don Imus his job. Letterman’s is an instance of abuse of power coupled with gender privileges. Sexual harassment at workplaces are so rampant and complex in their stratifications that it is implicitly required for the employers and employees not to engage in sexual relationships. This is necessary not because it may or may not cost the employer a reputation or the lack of it, but because, more often than not, the women employees will be victimized to suffer as silent subjects without alternative recourses. The women employees usually have lesser choices to explore avenues when they are confronted with hostile or demanding employer. Not only as being men, but also as being economically superior, the male employers need to enforce codes of conduct where the assumed disadvantages of female employees are not violated by anyone at the office, least of all, by the bosses themselves.

Letterman has violated the workplace ethics by involving in sexual relationships – not just with one woman, but with several, while being an employer. He has also displayed disgusting attitudes towards women in understanding their limits and potential. And his making references to his “affairs” in jocular fashion only adds to his already established sexist image.

When legality follows, Letterman may face charges, or like another privileged creative professional brought to recent limelight, Polanski, may gather enough media support for his case so as to have himself pictured as the victim. But for now, American media do not need Letterman’s jokes and judgments, considering his sense of “creepy” is beyond reproach, and judge he must never again. Privileges produce consensus. Letterman is the brightest instance who abused his privileges.

It’s a deceitful media circulation which suggests that the American judiciary is going after Roman Polanski. The truth is it never has. Polanski is a filthy criminal who had raped a child and yet was allowed to let go by the American justice system for over three decades. And this time, he is merely a bone which Switzerland threw at the United States over its UBS catastrophe. As for Polanski, who has visited Zurich several times and never been arrested before, its going to be few wordplays around extradition treaties that will ensure his freedom while, corporate media, hollywood biggies, and opportunist feminists rally in his support.

Disproportionately high number of poor people in America are imprisoned for crimes that are not remotely as heinous as Polanski’s. There is scarcely any demand for their unconditional release. And yet, the American elites have all the hearts for this scum of a man – a filmmaker powerful enough to evade law for such long periods. The man who could not have the courage to surrender before due processes of law, but always had the audacity to attend award ceremonies. Now that he is finally being held in Zurich, all kinds of extradition laws are being reviewed to have him released. What is even more interesting are his lawyers’ claims to their Zurich counterparts that they have evidence to suggest the California police were not very keen on his arrest. Following that, the efficient police department of Los Angeles immediately responds by saying they have been looking for Polanski for over thirty years now, and his arrest has nothing to do with diplomatic faux pas over UBS scandal!

How would have been an ordinary man treated while in position of Polanski is an easy guess. California court would not have taken so long to find a rapist, especially one who is visibly present everywhere, giving out interviews, and receiving awards. In place of an European like Polanski, what would have happened to an African-American celebrity had he been convicted of raping a minor, not to talk of drug possession charges accompanying it. It is worth noting that Michael Jackson was acquitted of all charges by the court, and yet he was damned as a pedophile by the media even after his death. No Hollywood elites signed petitions to attack the press or to convince President Obama that Jackson was a true American hero who deserved a tribute. But here is a man already confessed to have raped a child after drugging her and the media are all quoting his famous friends about his deeply troubled personal life!

Not just United States, even United Kingdom could have taken an action on Polanski. It could have easily handed over the criminal to California. But that did not take place. And the French, the self-proclaimed civilized, those that taught the Algerians how to behave as decent law-abiding citizens, of course preferred to twist their own laws when it came to treat a self-confessed rapist. French judicial system, instead of imprisoning a convicted and at-large criminal, decided to play word games of extradition treaties and harbored a pedophile rapist into emerging as a filmmaker of some repute. Not just that, this abominable piece of trash was even heralded as the pride of France, as one of the greatest of its sons! How does a rapist cease becoming one after crossing geographical borders is beyond amazement of human intellect of this century.

The Hollywood, the corporate media as well as renowned feminists have all come together to support Polanski and to demand his immediate release. Such hollow and reactionary are our current progressive movements that the world of films – that imaginative, creative society of free thinking professionals, has lost every sense of self-respect in their unquestioned support lent to a child predator.

Whoopi Goldberg claims she “does not believe, it was a rape-rape”. In her feminist sit-com show, “The View”, she thinks, “he’s sorry. I think he knows it was wrong. I don’t think he’s a danger to society.” Instead of using the opportunity to appeal to women of Hollywood and television industry to come out about the sexual exploitations women have continuously faced in film societies, resulting in phrases such as “casting couch”, and worse, rapes and humiliations by the veteran directors, producers and actors, Ms Goldberg decided to defend a child rapist and assumed he must be feeling sorry!

Debra Winger is also feeling sorry, apparently because according to her, the whole art world is going to suffer in the arrest of Polanski! Even as she knows, Polanski might at the most get a probation, or in the least likelihood, the highest of 16 months in prison. Which world will suffer for one year detention of a convicted rapist can only be left to Winger’s imagination.

Now comes, Peg Yorkin, the renowned feminist and chair of Feminist Majority Foundation, which she co-founded with Eleanor Smeal. Yorkin not only does clearly absolve Polanski, she even reverses the foundations of progressive feminism with her statements to LA Times: “My personal thoughts are let the guy go. It’s bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It’s crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things.”
Its sad, but a true reflection of comfortable feminists throwing around millions of dollars in charitable causes meant to address issues concerning women, but in reality, sympathize with the perpetrator as a victim. Yorkin parrots, what the mainstream media does: Polanski has been through a lot in his personal life. But they do not ponder over for a bit as to how does that anyway relate to the specific criminal act? When no one objected to his winning awards despite his personal life, why would the law not apply to Polanski because of it? The logic of Yorkin, Winger and Goldberg, our contemporary women champions of feminism are victimized by the same sexist structural overarching they are trying to contest.

Not to mention of the powerful males in Hollywood who are busy drafting petitions in support of the rapist claiming that “filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision.” Someone needs to tell them that France is already in Europe, so that mention is redundant, and secondly, “around the world” has no empirical basis. The whole world is not as perverted and manipulative as these signatories: Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Neil Jordan, Harvey Weinstein, Pedro Almodóvar and Ethan Coen.

The final defense is in the assumption that raping of minors was commonplace in those days and Polanski being a man of his times, his arrest is an unfortunate exception. Such arguments lack validity since in those days, so many black men were being routinely arrested on entirely false charges of rapes. It is true that Hollywood was perhaps the place for the Anglo-American playboys. Woody Allen immediately comes to mind – a privileged liberal who exploited his adopted children and married his stepdaughter, without his image being tarnished in any manner.

What is more distressing is that this trend of relegating the invisibly exploited women by the powerful filmmakers of Hollywood to irrelevance continues to this day. The fact that over a hundred legendary filmmakers come together to suppress the significance of combating sexual exploitation in the world’s wealthiest film industries, speaks of their own contributions in silencing the victims to this day. Be their films be declared hollow, their messages sexist, and their positions unworthy.

Written for publication in VoxUnion

Capitalism: A Love Story, is just that.

As occurs in most love stories, there are depictions of mismatched expectations, conflicting situations, remorse and grief, cherished moments, rejoiced nostalgia, idealistic aspirations, and eventually a unilateral resolve to call it quits. Michael Moore’s disillusionment with capitalism is manifested in the current liberal crisis: a crisis that discovers resolve in invoking the founding fathers and preaching moral ethics, a crisis that must indulge in taxonomy of political correctness.

Wistful Days of Yore: Most liberal commentators are currently obsessed with the ‘good old days’ before Ronald Reagan spoilt it all. Michael Moore’s film parrots this narrative rather pronouncedly in the film. According to Moore, in the good old days, students were not dependent on loans and wealth flowed into economy from all quarters, and “we even sent a man to the moon”. A system was working until it was failed and hence, the liberal remorse. The truth, however, is that the American political-economic system has never worked for the majority of people, in its entire history. The happy images of the yore which the film so poignantly projects as exemplification of successful economy were at their best, racist, discriminatory and exclusionary. American infrastructure were built not with free spirits of democracy, but with susceptibly invisible slave labor. Its a myth that there ever was a system that had worked in the United States for the betterment of majority of its people, or of the world. The film perpetuates it through appeal to look kindly at the Fordist era.

Not only the industrial period following the Second World War, Moore has selectively quoted from the original American Constitution and the “Second Bill of Rights” as suggested by FDR to appeal to the humanistic roots of American hegemony. Liberal espousal of such brilliant documents, however, are soaked in sheer idealism than any planning around radical restructuring. Neither the makers of such documents had any designs to implement equal access to outcomes of such resolutions, going by the exclusion of oppressed minorities in affairs of the nation, nor were there any attempts to limit the access of the privileged in controlling of economic power. Even to this day, if the Universal Health Care, far from being a fundamental right, has not even been implemented at legislative level, it is because of a refusal on part of the powers to curtail the existing exuberance of the rich class. Mere declarations for “general welfare” (Constitution) or right for “decent home” (Second Bill of Rights) are wishful, and hence by virtue of that, reactionary.

The “Golden Days” of the past never had any scope to limit the free market, and the present days have no control. Moore avoids deliberating on the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment which proclaims that private property cannot be taken by the state for public use. Nor does he quote the Second Bill of Rights where FDR also suggests that every businessman – small, and large, is free to trade in an atmosphere of freedom.
Capitalism versus Democracy: The film’s main argument is that Capitalism is different from Democracy. Indeed, Moore says the other -ism is not Communism, but Democracy. Moore’s reliance on the glories of American proclamation of democracy enshrined in the Constitution has guided him to such idealistic and misleading conclusions. The truth is American democracy has worked just the way it was designed to work from the very beginning. In fact, American democracy has only improved over the years. Women suffrage was not part of what the Founding Fathers had decided upon. By their documents, even the people of color were not going to be active participants in the electoral processes. No matter how many times we quote the Constitution’s exalted words, they were not designed for all. And yet, the document was a result of democratic standards to which Moore looks upto. Likewise, every subsequent amendments have been democratically implemented and have only resulted in sustenance of the status quo. America has been the citadel of democracy, an exemplary nation that has resulted in election of President Obama through sheer voting power. To deny the democratic nature of American politics is to redefine political democracy.

Moore could have chosen to redefine political democracy, because in reality, democracy thus far has only been a constant ally of the capitalists. Election of President Obama is not the liberation of African-Americans from centuries of discrimination; it is yet another victory for the private bankers and militarist forces that profit from economic recession and wars on Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq. Through system of electoral voting, financial manipulations have invariably always taken over the propaganda mill and influenced political processes in most western countries. Capitalism is the political-economic system that demands democratic consensus for its prosperity. Moore does not need to be a Marxist to understand this. A critical perusal of societal bases of economic relationships should suffice. Even President Obama’s democratic mandate was materialized through capitalistic alliances. Capitalism is not opposed to democracy. Indeed, it requires democracy so as to be able to fund, and benefit from, it. A breakaway from feudal past was necessary for the prospective capitalists, and envisioning a proletarian dictatorship through communism would seem nightmarish. The safest bet for the proverbial Wall Street magnets is sustenance of multi-party democracy. Moore surely is acutely aware of it. Roger and Me was an outstanding exposition of status quo elements. But with passing years, and as a Democratic Party fanboy, he is now clouded with misplaced optimisms.

Desperate attempts to separate capitalism from democracy have gone nowhere in the film, because in real life, they are inseparable. Be it Italy, or India, Germany or England, America or Philippines – political democracy is a major hoax of our times – an euphemism for plutocracy. Money buys votes, and democracy is the best system money can buy. Obama was aware of it during his fund-raising campaign which resulted in highest amount of revenue collection in electoral history. In so many ways, it is impossible to differentiate between Reagan and Clinton or Bush and Obama. Because there are no fundamental differences. Each of their democratic triumphs are thanks to capitalistic lobbyists.

Holy Books and Capitalism: So who are the anti-capitalists? Not the communists, Moore declares. They are the anti-communists! The Church! Moore’s childhood love for the Catholic nuns (an exceptional child he must have been) and dreams of becoming a priest himself, and in the typically liberal fashion of distancing oneself from Communism, Moore turns to the Fathers. He quotes the holy books to suggest how the Bible must have been anti-capitalistic in content. The Christian God himself is for the poor and the oppressed. Certainly the atheists must be the capitalists.

Moore misleads not just in his attempts to posit democracy as contradictory to capitalism, but also introduces Christianity as the friend of the oppressed. Not surprising, considering the current liberal fascination of alluring the mainstream and giving them a sense of unity under the America as envisaged by the new president – a race-neutral country of the one-God. Moore goes so far as to interview three Christian priests, and to quote from the scriptures – all appears honky-dory, and everything Christianity is about divine love for the poor and the oppressed. The anti-Capitalists are the Catholics. Such vulgarly twisted interpretations of a religion that singularly led to emergence of capitalism’s assaultive powers speaks of the acute vacuum that exists in current liberal thoughts. Or, quite simply, the dissent camps of the Democrats have merely been converted to becoming apologists for Obama administration. A film such as this clearly absolves Obama of the charges of being a socialist, a “Muslim”, and a likely shareholder of the economic mess.

Hail Obama: Moore, to the cheer of his traditional devotees (myself, included) bashes Reagan and Bush for their dastardly lies about economic state of the nation. But I shall find myself outside of his sycophantic zone in hailing Obama as the man on a mission to correct the ills brought upon by corporate greed. It is not only factually inaccurate to suggest that President Obama has done anything thus far to punish Wall Street mongers, but it is also absolutely ridiculous to overlook the amount of damages the new presidency has caused since its acquisition of power. The fact is President Obama’s election campaign depended on Wall Street mercies and he must remain obliged to their interests. And by all admission, he has. The biggest corporate bailouts in American history were not declared by Bush. They have been authored by Obama. The largest acquittals of financial criminals were not conducted by Reagan administration. They are being done right now by Obama administration. Moore does not offer the slightest hint of how manipulatively the current administration is functioning. The reality is not the failure of capitalism. It is the success of capitalistic democracy. The anti-thesis of Moore’s assumptions.

The film clearly serves as a propaganda medium for Obama administration. But I shall not blame Moore for this myopic project completion. His is reflective of larger liberal opinions. The opinions which have suddenly fizzled out in thin air when it comes to anti-war movements. There is no Cindy Sheehan in this Michael Moore film. A critique of capitalism without mention of the military-industrial complex? Sure, because now, the liberals benefit from the wars. The restless anger and frustration characteristic of Moore has been replaced with Christian values of selective amnesia. Class wars are not done through comic orchestrations. “Hey, tell the CEO that I am Michael Moore and I am here to make a citizen’s arrest” spanks of both celebrity arrogance as well as a self-proclaimed sense of being a savior. Much as his boss Obama, Moore is on a trip: “Are you with me? Let’s go change the world” rhetoric is so seeped in liberal privileges that the commands become invisible to the protagonists.

Democratic Party has killed the anti-war movement in the United States. First by organizing few demonstrations to change the color of the cola in the election war, and then by withdrawing the funds to continue the movement, the party has done bigger damages to kill the spirits of the peaceniks than the Republicans could ever imagine. Progressive filmmakers like Moore no more link war with capitalism as long as Democrats are in power. Is it not a fact that the economic recession could have been better handled had the administration curtailed the enormous defense budgets? With President Obama pushing for more wars against more nations through recruitment of more armed forces than even before, the conservatives are not complaining, and the liberals have their feet in their mouth. This is the first major documentary made by Moore that does not deal with economics of war. He has no one to blame but himself. His constant hope that Obama would somehow stop the wars has been shattered. But he is in denial.

Just as Moore is in denial when it comes to Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. He constantly showcases them as the villains of Bush era. But entirely skips to mention that they were hand-picked by President Obama as well. So why are they serving in Washington? Moore says Obama has selected them because they know the rules of the game. It is smart in selecting the Mafia to control the drug dealings. And what leads Moore to believe that Summers and Geithner will listen to Obama more than they listened to Bush? Unless, of course they are closer to the former. Either way, these are dangerous people – policy makers and capitalists on behalf of the militarists. They are the gifts of the political democracy. Just as Goldman Sachs is. Or Secretary Paulson, the former chief of Goldman Sachs was. If Obama is the hope for the democracy, Goldman Sachs – his million dollar sponsor – must be the protector of democracy. Moore, like Obama, denies that capitalism is inseparable from political democracy. Like the politically savvy liberals, both of them claim a distance from the dirty mud while embracing the rejoicing pig.

Upon election of Obama, Moore declares it is a “Farewell to Old America” in his film. He cites a bread factory cooperative and a Bank of America employees protest as examples of rejuvenated country that is witnessing revolutions against corporate takeover. This is exactly the kind of myth which the current administration wants to spread in its attempts to strengthen base among its loyalists. Moore has unknowingly or knowingly fallen in that pit. Anti-corporate sloganeering are among the easiest of protests. Politicians love it when the public turns its ire against the corporates, and business houses do not mind much of the assault so long as the politicians honor their contracts. Both the sectors remain so cozy in their actual functioning as partners in crimes because by turning the public ire against the “corporate greed”, they ensure that the enemy will always be a faceless, unknown bunch of people whose progress are neither supposed to be monitored by the public nor are even noticed from close quarters.

Therefore when a few dozens of Bank of America employees express their anger at the company, President Obama declares his support for them and win huge approvals. And needless to predict, the bank then hands over few thousand dollars to the employees and the movement fizzles out. The protestors think they have won the battle, whereas in reality, the political party in power gains strength, makes greater friends with the company, and the company bosses find reciprocation from Washington. So when Ken Lewis masterplans takeover of Merrill Lynch at $50 billion, or contributes to fraudulent misappropriation of taxpayers’ money worth $700 billion, eyebrows are raised, but actions are not taken against him. In fact, the public anger is still against the “corporates”, but the closures are hardly in sight. The biggest vultures, like Citigroup and Bank of America continue to flourish when it comes to their board member salaries with public money. In fact, Citigroup has liabilities of $1.797 trillion! And yet, these company heads, instead of being imprisoned for fraudulent practices, predatory lending, and mismanagement of working class money, are rewarded by the administration in Washington DC without any clause for future auditing of their subsequent spendings.

Political democracy has always needed capitalistic economics. They swim and sink together. The odd examples of cooperatives that Moore provides are not only exceptions, but they are romanticized exceptions. Cooperatives, unless made universal and owned by the states themselves make no sense, and are merely to suffer from the maladies of health insurance status in the United States. The private enterprises through their carrot dangling tactics will continue to attract a select few and the rest will be subjected to their own fates. Mixed economy, like the “middle class”, is a misnomer. There are only haves, and the have-nots. A credit society is not a prosperous society. America is a prime example of a failed economy because of capitalism. And capitalism survives through the political system it has helped create. Contrary to Moore’s assumptions, capitalism did not start with Reagan. It started with the Constitution of political democracy where the voting is counted, candidates are selected, the public is normalized into believing that the system which opts for “change” as opposed to “replacement” is the system that works.

Handing over $6000 worth of checks to few employees at a bank is not called advent of revolution. Temporary pacification of agitated mass through token money and soothing words of religious priests are actually murders of revolution.

Brother Gil Scott Heron has appropriately described what is a revolution:

“NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32 or report from 29 districts…There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose…The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution will be live.”

Michael Moore has distorted the idea of revolution. Revolutions indeed, cannot be predicted through mainstream movies commercially distributed nationwide. Or through the collaboration of the Catholic Church. Certainly not spearheaded by the likes of Obama and his fundraiser Goldman Sachs. As always, the conservative critics have raised wrong questions. The question that is being asked today is why Michael Moore resents capitalism so much if he makes so much money. And Moore continues to be defensive about it by citing instances of how the privileged can make a difference. By that standard, Warren Buffet and George Soros and Bill Gates are all necessary elements for a better world. In reality, these are the scums of the earth, and the parasites that grow with their charities. Moore does not need to defend any of these guys, nor does he need to answer why he is collaborating with Sony Pictures for his films or Warner Books for his books.

Moore may also look at another critique of capitalism, and he might just discover then that individual consciousness is shaped by the political economic system, and not the other way around. Revolutions are not conducted by one man with a controversial name and an amplifier, nor are they done by a group of people crying in joy at being pacified by a populist president throwing around resounding words. Revolutions are not supported by multi-party voting systems founded by oligarchies, sustained by nationalists, funded by feudalists and flavored by capitalists. Moore’s intents at attacking capitalism is much appreciated, and most timely for him to win few more awards from the European jury. But his tools of deconstructing capitalism as necessarily antithetical to political democracy, his analysis of class relations from the standpoint of Bill of Rights, his reliance on Germany, England and Japan as model democracies, and his aspirations to offer the political democracy as a solution to the global economic crisis, instead of isolating it as one of the root causes are worth inspections all over again. Liberals will do well in expressing solidarity with international movements against capitalism based on their class status and class alliances. In their reaffirmed belief in overthrowing of existing structures of power in a sense that there will be no president that will be heralded by his race, nor be surrounded by the old treasury criminals as his advisers.

A political democracy that allows everyone a vote without first ensuring that everyone has equal access to the potential of the exercised power, is a sham. Its a political system that was a stark failure when the Greeks first implemented it for only the elites. Its a system that was a failure when the European landowners implemented while excluding the slaves and the women. Its a system that continues to be a failure when India as the world’s largest democracy goes to polls with people illiterate and hungry. Its a system that remains a failure in America where the candidate that is fielded is the one who must raise most funds by collaborating with the corporate houses. Western democracy has been an abject failure, more so because it gets away with ‘masks of consent’ rather than facing revolutionary forces of workers in solidarity. Such phony democracy is a system that has become the norm, a standard against which other systems are evaluated, a self-sustained yardstick that has no place for upheavals and certainly, no scopes to imagine revolutions. Such unsurpassed strength of an immoral political system is possible only through the massive presence of its base: Capitalism. It is inconceivable for the modern democracy to exist without capitalism. The sooner the masses realize it, the sooner they will find their paths of liberation. They will not wait for another four years. Nor for the next charitable rich for their strikes to be called off.

Revolutions are expressions of collective human emotions. Not their suppressions. Moore’s comic attempts to capture the essence of our times are certainly worthwhile, but their attempts to define revolutionary ethos are not. The Moore I knew from Roger and Me is a much evolved man now. He is not so much opposed to the types of the Pat Boones during economic crisis. Rather, he is way more subtle, more religious and less angry a man now. And so is his new film. Without a distinctive revolutionary tone, which we had all so grown to expect from an unquestionably remarkable filmmaker like him.

Obama’s constant denial to acknowledge racial tensions in the United States has refused him an ability to officially respect Michael Jackson’s demise. Michael- the most famous black man and the most popular black entertainer in the world history passed away. And only the fans must do all the mourning. The fans must keep Michael’s memories alive. The United States system has apparently no obligation to commemorate the occasion. President Obama has refused to issue a written statement to mourn the passing of Michael even as world over, millions of people are heartbroken.

As a perpetuator of the liberal Zionist media spin, President Obama relegated his press secretary Gibbs, a thoroughly disgusting communicator considering his role of responsibility, to convey the musings to the media. And how did Gibbs respond to a series of sincere questions about why the White House would not release a written statement? He laughed and said to the press: “You know, I think I did a good job”.

He implied celebrating a national hero is not the job of the President. The president is apparently busy. He is too busy to join the huge majority of the earth to respect the most celebrated black man. After all, he is in constant denial about the significance of the black freedom struggle in the United States. A freedom struggle that continues to this day. A freedom struggle which was being waged by even the most “successful” artist of color.

President Obama acknowledges there is an economic crisis. He is trying his best to help the Wall Street magnets reclaim their power corridors. He is making sure that the corporate banking conglomerates get the “bailout” money needed to re-strengthen their stature. But he refuses to acknowledge that the economic crisis does not affect everyone equally. He refuses to acknowledge that in the United States, the society has been unequal along the racial divides. The corporate CEOs’ luxury vacations out of frustrations at economic stagnation should not be confused with the thousands of black educated men and women who have been unjustly abandoned from their workplaces.

Unlike Obama’s election rhetoric which denies racial inequalities in America, the fact is, there is a Black America and there is a White America. This is something which Michael Jackson painfully realized and publicly acknowledged. The way in which the White America creative industry overwhelms the Black American artistic endeavors was properly articulated by Michael: “All the form of popular music from Jazz to Hip-Hop, to Bebop, to Soul – all these are forms of black music…you talk about different dances from Catwalk, to Jitterbug, to Charleston, to Break dancing – all these are forms of black dancing. We (black artists) are the real pioneers who started these. These things are very important but if you go to the bookstore down the corner, you will not see one black person on the cover, you’ll see Elvis Presley, you’ll see the Rolling Stones.” Michael challenged the legacy of white musical legends such as Elvis and Beatles. He said, “Otis Blackwell was a prolific phenomenal writer who wrote some of the greatest Elvis Presley songs. And this was a black man, but he died penniless. I met his daughter and I’m so honored. It was the same level as meeting the Queen of England.”

Is it because Michael Jackson was vocal, nondiplomatic and accurate in his depiction of the racial divides in the American entertainment industry which irked President Obama? Or was it because Obama has simply no faith in the American judiciary system which despite having caused enough damages to Michael during his life, despite subjecting him to inhumane police brutality, clearly declared him innocent of each and every allegations brought forth against him. Michael was almost bankrupt and he could not even buy the judiciary system like many politicians simply raise funds to become political candidates. Michael was too private when it came to meeting the press so he could not influence the mass media unlike many politicians who simply use the force of empty rhetoric and press relations to declare untested popularity. Where did Michael fault so much as to not deserve a national statement upon his death?

President Obama never hesitated to offer a written statement for Omar Bongo – an infamously corrupt politician of Gabon – when he died, just two weeks before Jackson’s demise! Obama’s written statement said: “I am saddened to learn of the death of President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon. President Bongo played a key role in developing and shaping the strong bilateral relationship that exists between Gabon and the United States today. President Bongo consistently emphasized the importance of seeking compromise and striving for peace, and made protecting Gabon’s natural treasures a priority. His work in conservation in his country and his commitment to conflict resolution across the continent are an important part of his legacy and will be remembered with respect. On behalf of the United States government, I offer my condolences to his family and to the people of Gabon.”

Clearly President Obama has no elementary knowledge of the cold war history, else he would never make such a statement praising Bongo! Unless of course he has only consumed the noncritical liberal press that makes hero of anyone who praises interventionistic tactics of the United States. Bongo, right on! Michael Jackson, hell no!

Obama has never failed to issue official statements just to denounce the decision of a magazine to honor Louis Farrakhan. “I strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

The White House released official statement from the President regarding shooting at DC’s Holocaust Museum, which left one security guard dead: “I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms. No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.”

To such statements – be it in honor of Bongo or the Holocaust Museum, or in opposition to honoring Farrakhan, there need not be any controversy. As a human being, Obama is entitled to honor or dishonor them. But when it comes to Michael Jackson, whose contributions to the world of music is unlike any other, and which is duly acknowledged by everyone – and whose death was mourned by world leaders from Nelsn Mandela to Hugo Chavez, what did Obama have to lose?

More importantly, what has United States got to lose if we officially show respect to MJ – the most well known and acknowledged man of color. Will we never commemorate his death with a national week of mourning? Will we never celebrate his birthday officially? Will we never remember that black artistry must be celebrated above all else? It is true we have not duly acknowledged many great black artists in the past. The question is shall we continue this trend?

United States machinery has appropriated the gains from Michael’s “We Are The World” to help America put a human face on its cold war strategies. In America’s war against drugs, Michael has been used as the most influential and positive role model. To implement humanitarian causes that secured politicians such as Al Gore Nobel Prizes and Bill Clinton immortality, Michael’s legacy was used to the max. And most notably, in the past, all American Presidents have issued official statements mourning great artists. Here are just a few:

Jimmy Carter’s written Statement by the President on the Death of Elvis Presley on August 17, 1977

“Elvis Presley’s death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique and irreplaceable. More than 20 years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense, and he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country.”

John Lennon was remembered after his death by both President Carter and incoming President Reagan through written statements.

Frank Sinatra’s death was mourned by Bill Clinton through a detailed written statement to the press:
“Hillary and I were deeply saddened to hear of the death of a musical legend and an American icon, Frank Sinatra. Early in his long career, fans dubbed him ‘The Voice.’ And that was the first thing America noticed about Frank Sinatra: that miraculous voice, strong and subtle, wisecracking and wistful, streetwise but defiantly sweet. In time he became so much more. Sinatra was a spellbinding performer, on stage or on screen, in musicals, comedies and dramas. He built one of the world’s most important record companies. He won countless awards, from the Grammy — nine times — to the Academy Award, to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And he dedicated himself to humanitarian causes. When I became president, I had never met Frank Sinatra, although I was an enormous admirer of his. I had the opportunity after I became president to get to know him a little, to have dinner with him, to appreciate on a personal level what fans around the world, including me, appreciated from afar. Frank Sinatra will be missed profoundly by millions around the world. But his music and movies will ensure that ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ is never forgotten. Today, I think every American would have to smile and say he really did do it his way. Hillary and I would like to offer our condolences to Frank’s wife, Barbara, and to his children, Nancy, Frank Jr., and Tina. Our hearts are with them today.”

What has stopped President Obama and the US administration from honoring Michael Jackson, who has emerged even greater in his death?

Even as President Obama leads the nation into the biggest fireworks show in American history to celebrate the day, the Fourth of July is a stark reminder of American inequalities, not independence.

The independence movement of American republic was not aimed at securing liberty to the inhabitants. American independence from the British Empire was not attained for the indigenous peoples, the black population or for the women. It was an independence that certainly had created a radical series of documents but the departure from the tradition of overlooking the plights of the oppressed has never been done either through inspiration or through implementation. American Constitution to this day of 2009 still does not strive to provide life of equality towards the minorities – the various minorities that actually comprise the majority in this country. And the reasons for celebrations are scant.

Reasons for celebration of July 4th would be uphold the American monopolization of militarist endeavors that has collaborated with their partners in crimes such as India and Israel. It would be to support the interventionist policies of the United States in the affairs of sovereign nations around the world with an aim to subjugate them to corporate blackmailings or annihilations. It would be identical with loftily championing the neocolonial mindset to divide the people along lines of nationalities in the garb of patriotism. What is worse, to declare human beings as “illegal” simply because they are struggling to be granted a citizenship status, often in duress from their own lands being under occupation. They remain “aliens” even while their labor is expropriated for cheap to the huge benefit of the capitalistic society.

And reasons for celebration of July 4th as declared by President Obama is in such a contrast to the reasons for not celebrating it by the great Frederick Douglass, that one cannot help but reject as vehemently the White House statement and embrace the abolitionist’s with as much enthusiasm.

President Obama: “Today, we are called to remember not only the day our country was born – we are also called to remember the indomitable spirit of the first American citizens who made that day possible. We are called to remember how unlikely it was that our American experiment would succeed at all; that a small band of patriots would declare independence from a powerful empire; and that they would form, in the new world, what the old world had never known – a government of, by, and for the people. That unyielding spirit is what defines us as Americans. It is what led generations of pioneers to blaze a westward trail. It is what led my grandparents’ generation to persevere in the face of a Depression and triumph in the face of tyranny. It is what led generations of American workers to build an industrial economy unrivalled around the world.”

Great Frederick Douglass: “Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the American nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America!….. Fourth of July is a day that reveals to the enslaved, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. ……Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen…….You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty.”

The emotions of Frederick Douglass expressed well more than a century and half ago is still so relevant that it makes a mockery of the American capitalism which is being advanced by the likes of Barack Obama.
Often it is the most oppressed in the nation who can express the biggest truth to its people. The enslaved of the America today have only increased in number, proportion and perpetuity. The biggest economic sector of the United States today in 2009 is unorganized. It comprises exploited nannies, nurses, office assistants, graduate students and millions of non-unionized workers in virtually every field of seasonal employment.

In the largest industrialized nation of the day, manual labor forces exist in abundance that is underpaid and inhumanely treated. Minimum hourly wages and annual poverty rates are abominably low at any level. Prostitution and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and uncritical education, disparities in healthcare and education system divided along economic lines, police brutality and intelligence infiltration are constant reminders that the independence movement is being carried out on an everyday basis – each time a Sean Bell is murdered or a Mumia is tried in court.

Discriminations at workplaces are so rampant that basic human rights are courtroom dramas every passing day. Largest population of undertrial prisoners in the world suffer in American prisons. Prison-industrial complex continues to exploit slave-labor inside the jails. Constant drug and human trafficking and lack of gun control leads crisis to resurface in such ghastly manner that would trivialize all allegations of foreign terrorism conspiracies. The militarist intervention of the United States into sovereign lands that do not subscribe to White House orders have continued with the Cold War fervor. Innocent civilians world over are targeted and eliminated by American and their allies NATO forces in the pretext of human freedom that is denied to the homeless and uninsured sick people of America right in her community neighborhoods.

Fourth of July is a very significant day in American history. But not so much as a day of independence, as it is a day of critical self-reflection and privilege recognition. A day of acknowledging the deplorable militarization and despicable human rights records of the most vicious empire on the Earth: United States of America.

Obama administration has two vital interests in Iran: continuation of war and imperialistic expansion. And neither of these remotely relate to establishment of a democratic society or any other fanciful distractions that most Americans are being spoon fed to believe in through their reactionary media propaganda.

In fact, a democratic society already exists in Iran. It is more vibrant and expressive than many other nations, including that of the United States. Iran’s democracy is so vibrant and strong that it has been able to produce a visionary leader such as Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a leader who has singularly challenged the capitalistic hegemonic barbarism inflicted upon the world through Wall Street scamsters, whereas on the other hand, as a starkly unfortunate contrast, these are the conmen that President Obama has been sheltering from day one of his taking over the office at White House.

Ahmadinejad is a leader of global influence whose stands against American militarism and Israeli occupations have widest reverberation among the majority in the world. Ahmadinejad has also been a national leader of Iran who has steadfastly refused to let Iran go of its sovereignty, its self-respect and its fundamental right to develop scientific and nuclear researches. Ahmadinejad has been the leader lending a spirit of solidarity to all the oppressed nations and peoples of the world who have been either trampled upon geographically by expansionist NATO forces or held captive psychologically through the media warfare unleashed by corporate media masquerading as liberal free estates.

Ahmadinejad is a necessity for the betterment of the world at large not simply because unlike any other leader in the world today he alone has the ability to challenge the globalized yet monopolistic power corridors of capitalistic combines, but also because he has displayed acute amount of perseverance in managing a civil war at home abetted by foreign interests, deep sense of political acumen to understand international relations imbalances, profound ability to confront the reactionary interventionist assaulters with calm understanding. Western corporate media as well the so-called liberals’ constant vilification of his personality, on his political career and public honesty merely suggest a targeted attack on a sovereign country’s head – an ugly and criminally abominable tradition continued in United States and much of western Europe since several decades now. So why do the NATO block countries – including their educated youths, often think the way they do.

History of Holier-Than-Thou Democracy:

Along with racial genocides, enforced slavery, interventionist militarism, illegalization of human beings, minimum wage exploitations, and civil rights suppressions, American power structure while oppressing its own working class people at home has also pioneered one other aspect that has been demonstrated to morally overshadow everything else: “Holier-Than-Thou Democracy”.

This “Holier-Than-Thou Democracy” – a political system of democracy which constitutionally never worked for all the people residing in the country – not even in 2009 – is intrinsically flawed. A system that excludes a huge section of people based on their naturalization status (even while they enrich the country through manual labor and income taxes) is intrinsically elitist. A system that runs to the politically appointed judges to decide fates of popular electoral results is intrinsically corrupt. A system that decides its head based on how much fund-raising that person is able to evince, how much of friendly corporate class alliance can that person exhibit, how much of media propaganda can that person muster to demonstrate – is a system that is intrinsically pro-capital, anti-people.

This is the nature of American democracy – evolving since well more than two centuries and still lands up being far from a decent one, let alone being a perfect model. To call American democracy decent would be to celebrate wealth disparities. It would amount to rejoicing marginalization of the poor who never have the means to receive Ivy league education as the presidents have, or when they do, most of them do not choose to align their class affiliation with the bourgeois. To call American democracy decent would be to amplify a mockery at the largest undertrial prisoners in the world; to emulate the dumbest people on the earth who are systematically deprived of a necessary knowledge about the true history of their collective struggles. To call American democracy decent would be to cheer on the military onslaughts by the NATO forces routinely demolishing cultures to shreds, relegating heritages to rubbles, raping women to objects, killing children to the untold history and torturing prisoners to unthinkable states.

To call American democracy decent would be to convey resounding support to the war declarations of its president – one after the other – each one of them. To glorify the culture of war against innocent people in far away lands. To call American democracy decent would be to assume Obama as the voice of an exhausted nation whereas he clearly represents the interests of the bankers who have financed his party while bankrupting the country. To call American democracy decent would be the biggest hoax of this century, and the last.

A much much bigger hoax it would be than what the world media are accusing Iranian elections to be. To call American democracy decent would be to declare the United Nations dead.

And yet, this is exactly what we have been doing all these years. All these decades since the beginning of the so-called Cold War. Each American administration has worked overnight to protect the interests of the greedy corporate class that is integral to maintaining the phony democracy operated through networks of ill-gotten wealth. American political system has been a necessary tool in the hands of the capitalist class to maintain a status quo of private wealth accumulation by the historically privileged or their recent converts. American political system has been the backbone of the world capitalistic system.

And in turn, the capitalistic combines have gifted to the American political system a corporate press – one which will stand away from the dirty political diplomatic quarters and instead extend its support externally. The American media – along with the religious and educational institutions which are otherwise amply funded by the state to also support the system from the outer- carry out their daily duties to inform people of the events through such packaging that would enhance a sense of security. The American media have in the process established a sense of political knowledge hitherto unknown to the human beings. A brand of political knowledge that begins with definitions and ends with definitions. A series of definitive prepositions regarding what constitutes “democracy” , “equality” and “justice” that are void of political logic, of ethical dimensions, of moral duties and of socialistic thoughts.

America with its utterly indecent form of political manipulations – where only the wealthy participates within a two party monopolistic system which involves little to none differences in their core adherences- ends up producing a nation of blatantly ignorant citizenry that have been designed to be kept away from emancipatory knowledge – lest they challenge the consumeristic exploitations, the standards of privatized education, healthcare and employment sectors. One of the magnificent ways in which this trickery continues is in celebration of the system itself. An obviously unequal system of political governance which fosters class societies and debt-ridden passivity of the majority is bombarded every day as having the authenticity from the very people it oppresses.

Just as outlandishly unrealistic Hollywood flicks become household names owing to advertisement galore, just as a political candidate becomes legitimized simply by utilizing the sheer reach of campaign wealth, the America democracy is heralded as the greatest political process in the world magnified through the lens of the media moguls it protects. The people – the active audience starts perceiving itself as “smart” since they are told they are indeed getting to “choose”: no matter if it is only within Pepsi and Coke or New York Times and New York Post or McCain and Obama. The freedom of choice – within the choices permitted by the system to prevail in the race – is celebrated as the mark of brilliant liberty exercise.

Anything that slightly or vastly opposes this system in a level of implementation then is viewed as the “other”. This “they” can no longer be tolerated to exist, let alone prevail upon. Taking cue from the individualistic philosophy that shapes capitalistic economy, the power structure of capitalism unleashes its attack on those that differ from it, not by degree, but by type. The entire saga of Cold War was written with bloodshed caused by America’s interventions in the sovereign countries whichever among them thought of adopting a non-capitalistic system. Every time a nation freeing itself from colonialists would deliberate upon adopting a socialist economy, American political system – the very system that would on one hand sing rhetoric of self-proclaimed land of the free and on the other would be crushing its minority populations under police dog attacks at home – would send its young innocent troops to emerge as habitual war criminals in countries they had never dreamt of visiting as a tourist. From Korea, to Congo, from Vietnam to Chile, from Greece to Algeria – the United States has always invariably become the country of attackers, plunderers, rogues and intruders. Not to mention, world’s only atomic power bomber. The biggest hawkish nuclear power holder. The strongest voice against disarmament. The most immoral example in the history of civilization.

Subsequent to the cold war, it was America which funded the Islamic extremists to wipe out remaining secular people of Afghanistan. It was America which funded the Gulf War through Kuwait’s adamance to Iraq’s occupation to capture of Iraq itself. Its interventionist strategies have annihilated nations and disrupted normalcy of lives among millions of people across the world. But such strategies have succeeded not because America had one war president or the other, but because the system of American democracy is inherently militarist, which no president, no matter how well meaning the person may be, can prevent from actualizing year after year.

Continuing with the disastrous war against Iraqi people is Obama’s enthusiasm for war against people of Pakistan, Palestine and Iran. Any amount of fundamentally autonomous protest against Americanization of the world is not subject to toleration by the American president. Like the ancient Kings and Emperors, Clinton, Bush and Obama appear to be calm and ethical. They have spoken the same lines of ethical duplicity and yet the statement is abundantly clear: One is either with America or against America. And while being with America one is with justice and democracy. Or else.

Unfortunately for the American presidencies, not every leader of the world has succumbed to their implicit threats. It is true that to remain world’s sole superpower, a country’s leader must mobilize all forces, direct all provocative speeches to unite the people, and needs to expand the sphere of influence in the world. But what is also true is that this ambition to remain as global superpower, to hold the position of being the biggest militarist in the world is not necessarily acceptable to the others. At least, not any longer.

Peoples everywhere, from New York’s Harlem to corners in Tehran have exhibited deep angst and disrespect towards American imperialism. To suppress that, naturally enough, as has been done in the past and as is expected in the future, American intelligence agencies have infiltrated into progressive camps and have done everything possible to turn the tides. America has witnessed the failure of its domestic youth movements for social justice, from Weather Underground to Black Panthers – the relevance of whom are felt now than ever before especially since there is no one left today to speak on behalf of the oppressed communities following the victory of tokenism. The failure has been brought about by the system against the progressive peoples everywhere – at times through sheer force and at times through intelligence tactics involving infiltration, pamphleteering, and at most times simply through the power of money and intimidation.

History is replete with instances of FBI’s investigations against peace-loving American citizens and of CIA’s interventions in foreign countries’ affairs when the latter have fundamentally differed with America’s stands.

Iran merely happens to be the latest victim (albeit, once again).

Tomorrow: Iran: America’s Battle Playground